‘Natural’ is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Between 2005 and 2015, ‘natural’ was among thetop 10 claimsmade about new food and beverage products. In 2017, USorganic food sales grew 6.4%, totalling $45.2 billion, compared to 1.1% growth in overall food sales. We see these preferences not only in food, but inmedicineandbeauty products.

These preferences make sense in some ways – naturalness could be a proxy for important featureslike food safety and sustainability – but they could also be problematic. Right now, technology holds the opportunity for us to produce more food in more sustainable ways. One example of this is cultured meat(also known as clean meat, cell-based meat or slaughter-free meat).

Cultured meat is meat grown for consumption from cellsthat were extracted and grown outside of an animal. This technology enables us to produce meat without growing and slaughtering animals. It is estimatedto use 99% less land, 7–45% less energy, 82–96% less water, and produce 78–96% fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional farming.

Ideational beliefs of natural superiority are characterised by moral beliefs – that natural things are morally better – and a preference for the normative order, where natural things existed prior to human intervention. In the same study, natural preferences persist even when the natural and unnatural versions of products are specified to be chemically identical, suggesting that naturalness preferences tend to be ideational.

However,more recent findingssuggest that even when natural and unnatural products are presented as chemically identical, people do not genuinely believe those distinctions – that is, they do not believe that natural things can be chemically identical to unnatural things.

This suggests that our preference for the natural is not evidence-based. In order to logically justify a preference for naturalness, we must either prefer natural things despite knowing that they are identical to unnatural counterparts, or we must reject the belief that unnatural and natural things can be the same.

One study even found that the risk of colon cancer from red meat was considered significantly less acceptable when caused by cultured meat than the same risk caused by farmed meat.

Cultured meat, along with other technologies such as genetically modified food (such as beta-carotene-rich Golden Rice), may improve the way we live, reduce hunger, reduce suffering and reduce our impact on the planet. However, our preference for natural things might be an impassable barrier to consumer acceptance.

Dr Matti Wilks is a postdoctoral research associate at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University .

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